Currently modelled on the Stokesley and Villages Repair Cafe Publicity
Publicity for events & recruiting volunteers
For Stokesley / Swainby Repair Cafe I usually put a post up 8-10 days before the event and another 2-3 days before with 2-3 photos, date/time/venue & short description & any special additions. I write one post then share this across the other groups.
eg May 2024’s post:
May’s Repair Cafe will be at Swainby Village Hall on Saturday 18th 10-12. We will have Andy from Sustrans to give your bikes a free health check & fix if needed as well as free darning / visible mending tutorials as part of #menditmay alongside our regular repair volunteers who will fix your broken household items – electrical appliances, wooden furniture, laptops & mobile phones, toys & bikes, ceramics & glass, clothing & textiles, @blades in need of sharpening – or give advice if we can’t.
All for free including refreshments (donations to cover costs welcomed).
Saving you the cost of buying new, saving the planet from waste, it’s all good!
For Middlesbrough Repair Cafe I have found and have been regularly posting in these 25 groups (see below). I found these by using ‘Middlesbrough’ and neighbourhoods like ‘Linthorpe’ and ‘Acklam’ in the search bar.
There may be more!
- Acklam Alert 12.2K
- Acklam:Connected 2.9K
- Acklam Community Group 5.3K
- Bringing People together across Middlesbrough 807
- Community Champions Middlesbrough 3.1K
- Coulby Newham TS8 9.6K
- Eston & Normanby 3.5K
- Friends of Eston 9.3K
- Friends of the Earth Middlesbrough Redcar & Stockton 317
- Friends of Normanby Village 4.3K
- Greenstuff Middlesbrough & beyond 4.6K
- In the Boro:Easterside 6.2K
- hemlington noticeboard 4.5K
- Ingelby Barwick Community 3.9K
- Ingelby Barwick post whatever you like 6.3K
- Linthorpe Community Group 845
- Loving Linthorpe 1.6K
- Marton Nunthorpe and surrounds 4.4K
- Marton Nunthorpe and surrounds Residents Group 5.0K
- Nunthorpe Noticeboard 7.6K
- Ormesby Good Neighbours 1.4K
- The Ingelby Barwick Noticeboard 8.9K
- The Nunthorpe Noticeboard 1.3K
- Thornaby Alert 7.4K
Posters
For Swainby/ Stokesley RC we have created one poster (Candace has created one for Middlesbrough RC) which we then update with new dates every month on a separate strip of paper with Blutak.
We display the poster at the following venues:
Community centres
Libraries
GP / health centres
Small local shops
Newspapers
Our ‘local’ paper is the Darlington & Stockton Times North Yorkshire Edition. To start with we wrote an article about Repair Cafes in general with the date of the upcoming one then we place a short advert in the regular villages & towns directory the week preceding the event.
Email listings
I produce a monthly online magazine for our umbrella organisation Climate Action Stokesley & Villages where I promote the RC in our activities list; this is emailed out to our mailing list of 500.
We also promote the RC via village emailing lists (eg Great Ayton Newsletter & Stokesley Loop)
Other media
Our local churches produce monthly newsletters which include our RC in their listings.
David Scrivens of Climate Action Middlesbrough / Middlesbrough Environment City produces a mailing list of ‘green’ events. We sent him the Middlesbrough RC poster which he then promoted via his weekly mail outs. He would need at least one week’s notice: David.Scriven@menvcity.org.uk
Recruiting volunteers
At Stokesley/Swainby we have found the most effective way of recruiting volunteers is by directly asking friends and colleagues, then new volunteers ask their friends etc.
For Middlesbrough RC there has been quite a good response via Facebook posts so this could be continued.
Climate Action Stokesley and Villages 